Usage

Usage

Dill, with its lacy blue-green foliage and showy umbrellas of yellow flowers, is an attractive addition to the flower border as well as the herb garden. Don't omit dill from the butterfly garden as it a premiere larval food source for many species.

Harvest dill foliage as needed. Dill weed usually is used fresh, but it can be frozen; dried dill weed is a poor substitute for the fresh. The seeds are harvested just as they begin to turn brown, usually 2-3 weeks after the flowers have finished. Cut seed heads off and dry in a paper bag until the seeds can be shaken from the seed heads. Store in an airtight jar.

Dill is, of course, the principal flavoring in dill pickles, but it also is used to add zest to potato salads, egg salads and sauerkraut, and to flavor vinegars and sauces for fish. Dill goes well with cabbage and other boiled vegetables. Often the seeds are used for these purposes, but the leaves serve equally well. We use fresh dill leaves in salads, and on broiled salmon.

A dill weed in full bloom is a galaxy of tiny yellow flowers. Dill (and other members of the carrot family) are the sole food plants for the caterpillars of the beautiful black swallowtail butterfly. Dill flowers attract beneficial insects to the vegetable garden, too. Lacewings and syrphid fly adults eat the pollen of dill and other carrot family plants, and their larvae prey on plant sucking aphids. Keep a few dill plants scattered here and there throughout the vegetable garden. Usually wherever they come up is fine with me; sometimes I have to make an executive decision and move a seedling a few feet one way or another.

The dried flower heads of dill provide an attractive, airy form for floral arrangements.